On Curiosity and Crusty Old Books

I just started reading a book called The Elegant Witch, found in a used bookstore under the banner “Nostalgia.” It's a hardback, first published in 1952, and I was attracted to its glossy, finely illustrated book jacket and the lovely typography inside—something I've come to appreciate as a graphic artist who was trained just as phototypesetting started giving way to digital—a much visually inferior experience. On the cover, a woman clad in an ankle-length riding skirt grasps the reins of horse charging past a stormy and leafless forest, her cape flapping in the wind. I flipped through it, and finding it highly readable, brought it home on a whim.

More and more, influential people that I read and listen to speak of “curiosity.” Brené Brown calls curiosity a “superpower.” Molly Bloom, known for running famous poker games frequented by powerful male celebrities, told Jordan Harbinger that she won their trust by “[cultivating] an authentic curiosity” about them. And in a TED interview, Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of the importance of following the “gentle impulse” of curiosity. She tells about starting to garden on a whim, then investigating the origin of some of her plants, then ending up in Tahiti “exploring the history of moss,” and finally weaving it all into a novel about a nineteenth century female botanist. Creativity “comes in whispers,” Liz says, but can “grow thunderous.”

It is against the backdrop of Liz's advice that I stopped fighting the impulse to carry home vintage books, especially children's books, from the used bookstore I pass on my daily walk, having previously feared it a pointless and time-wasting endeavor. But what's up with that? I waste plenty of time on activities with far less promise of enrichment. The Internet, for example.

Also, some nonfiction author opining on our attention-challenged age, whose name I've now lost, said reading fiction makes you smarter, and another speaker I also cannot name recommended reading books, especially “old ones,” as an antidote to modern ennui. I think he meant classics. But there was really no reason, in the end, to resist bringing home Miss Twiggley's Tree by Dorthea Warren Fox, a book I would find beautiful, refreshingly feminist, and inspiring—it's giving me an idea for my next project.

I assumed The Elegant Witch, by contrast, would be some forgettable pulp novel. But whatever—Liz said it was ok. Turns out it's a rather beloved work of historical fiction, based on the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials, that's been in print since its inception. Its English title is Mist Over Pendle, and its English author produced another fifteen books.

And I've been thinking about the Renaissance. It's been a minute since I took that class, so forgive my superficial treatment. The Renaissance followed the Middle Ages, a time of famine, war, a theological focus in art and literature, and witch trials of the aforementioned sort. People began to crave deep knowledge, so they returned to the almost forgotten scientific and mathematical texts of the ancient Romans and Greeks. There's a lesson for our times. A parallel, even.

Maybe picking up crusty old books is not the absolute worst use of my time.